10 killed, 3 wounded in mass shooting at a grocery store in New York

An 18-year-old white gunman shot dead 10 people and wounded three others at a grocery store in a Black Quarter neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, before surrendering after what authorities called an act of “racist-motivated violent extremism.”

Authorities said the suspect, who was armed with a assault rifle and appeared to have acted alone, drove to Buffalo from his home in a county in New York “hours away” to launch a Saturday afternoon attack, which he aired on the Internet. .

Eleven of the 13 people hit by the shots were black, officials said. The other two were white. The racial collapse of the dead was not clarified.

The suspect, who was not immediately named by police, was heavily armed and dressed in tactical equipment, including armor, police said.

When the suspect was confronted by officers in a lobby of the store, the suspect held a gun to his own neck, but they made him drop the weapon and surrender, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news briefing.

Gramaglia said the perpetrator shot and killed three people in the parking lot at Tops Friendly Market before exchanging fire with a former police officer who worked as a security guard for the store, but the suspect was protected by his body armor.

The guard was one of the 10 people shot dead in the incident, the other nine were all customers. Three other employees of the store, part of a regional chain, were injured but are expected to survive, authorities said.

Shonnell Harris, a manager at Tops, told Buffalo News that she thought she heard as many as 70 shots and that she fell several times as she ran through the store to a back exit.

“He looked like he was in the army,” she told the newspaper, describing the camouflage-clad assailant.

Retired firefighter Katherine Crofton, who lives nearby, said she witnessed the start of the bloodshed from her porch.

“I saw him shoot this woman,” Crofton told the newspaper. “She was going straight into the store. And then he shot another woman. She put groceries in her car. I got down because I did not know if he would shoot me.”

Stephen Belongia, the FBI specialty agent in charge of the bureau’s field office in Buffalo, said the attack would be investigated both as a hate crime and as an act of “racist-motivated violent extremism” under federal law.

“This person was pure evil,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said at a news conference, his voice shaking with emotion. “It was a direct racially motivated hate crime from someone outside our community.”

The suspect was expected to appear in court to be charged with murder by the end of the day, officials said.

“This is a day of great pain for our community,” Buffalo Mayor Bryon Brown told reporters. “Many of us have been in and out of this supermarket many times … We can not let this hateful person divide our society or our country.”

Brown said he had received calls from the White House and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

U.S. Representative Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the attack appeared to be the work of a violent white supremacy.

“We must pass the law on the prevention of domestic terrorism without delay,” he wrote on Twitter.